Sunfish Park Subdivision

The five homes in Sunfish Park were designed to meld cohesively while still boasting unique structure and style. Each lot was sited carefully to make the best use of the views, passive solar, and ventilation, while still ensuring privacy.

The building envelope includes La Palloma closed-cell spray-urethane insulation—to R-38 in the walls and R-52 to 56 in the roof—and Sierra Pacific windows and doors; two of the units also have 1/2-inch Atlas R Board.

The homes’ slab-on-grade concrete floors were ground to 1,000 grit to expose the aggregate, then topped with a water-based stain and a low-VOC sealer and polished and waxed; upper floors feature concrete, also stained and sealed, over wood-framed flooring. Walls are finished with a hand-troweled Vella plaster, some with a wax coating, and ceilings feature Benjamin Moore low-VOC paint.

Exteriors of earth-toned stucco, reclaimed metal, and wood trim lend an immediate rustic appeal to the five homes in Sunfish Park, an appropriate aesthetic for the area’s backdrop of lake and mountains. That blending with nature, along with the community’s similar-yet-different approach to the individual home styles, won over the jury. “The basic principle behind this development was to create unique structures that share common materials and detailing,” explains the designer, “allowing the developer to closely control building costs through repetition, but allowing each structure to read as a unique home in a neighborhood setting.”

By working out conceptual house and lot sizes before final site platting, the designers ensured each modest dwelling makes use of the expansive views and passive solar—but without looking directly into neighboring units.

Natural-gas boilers and in-slab radiant heat provide comfort despite the cold climate, with help from staggered-stud wall framing that reduces thermal bridging and a robust insulation package using closed-cell low-VOC spray urethane in the walls (R-38) and ceilings (R-52 to R-56). Energy-efficient appliances and lighting were speced throughout, reducing electrical loads augmented by the 1.45-kW PV systems installed in each home.